Bucket List

√  Make Bucket List

I’ve heard it been phrased once before, quite interestingly, that the more items a person has on their bucket list, the less satisfied that person is with their current life. If that’s the case, then I myself must be quite dissatisfied with my own life, for not only do I have an extensive bucket list, I have also made multiple iterations of a personal bucket list over the years. How deeply dissatisfied I must be to have made so many lists of all the cool things I’ve never done! And all the other people out there—the abundance of bucket lists everywhere must indicate that the mass of people live lives of quiet desperation (Thoreau must have been so satisfied with his life because no record of him making a bucket list exists). But, in a way that line of thinking makes sense. What is a bucket list, after all, but a visual record of all the things you still haven’t accomplished in your life, and perhaps never will? When viewed this way, having a long bucket list indeed is a sad thing.

If you are, in fact, looking at your bucket list and fantasizing over all the things you haven’t yet done or the places where you haven’t been, it may indicate a longing for something different than your current life. Maybe you are actually dissatisfied with your life in the fact that you aren’t going scuba diving every single day or that you haven’t visited every single foreign country. That’s probably a few folks out there. But for the rest of us, not accomplishing a bucket list item doesn’t even break a sweat. The bucket list, as it is used most beneficially, is a tool to help in defining and pursuing goals. It is a creative and fun way of imagining all the possible things you could do in your life, with the added oomph of some motivation and satisfaction from checking off a box.

I hate to think of the bucket list as a measure of how we are performing in our lives, in terms of whether we are satisfied with them or not. Instead, the bucket list is more a grab-bag of fun and adventuresome activities that you’d like to at least try once. At least for me, most items on my bucket list are dreamy and tend to be long-shots at best. Skydiving? (check!). Go diving in a submarine? (uncheck).  Why would some activities, such as skydiving, even exist if not for the sole purpose of being checked off bucket lists?

Though I have long been a fan of making lists, the very first ‘bucket list’ I ever made was for a school project in seventh grade. In an elective class, we learned about the man with perhaps the most famous bucket list ever. His name was John Goddard—and he didn’t refer to it as his bucket list either. John Goddard was a man of life, and instead of thinking about all the things he wanted to do before he died, he thought of all the things he wanted to do while still alive to include on his so-called ‘Life List’ (perhaps that’s only a rhetorical difference, but it changes one’s perspective nonetheless). On a rainy day in 1939, at the age of 15, Goddard wrote down his initial Life List of 127 goals. Most of them were very difficult or lofty, encompassing explorations into uncharted lands or a desire to set the record for speed in an airplane. Lofty goals can often fall by the wayside, but young Goddard didn’t just tuck his Life List away and forget about it. The most exceptional thing Goddard did was not to make his list in the first place, but to actively pursue his goals after the fact. With his list in mind, Goddard found a path to accomplishment, attending college to become a traveling anthropologist and joining the US Air Force to fly planes. Throughout his life, Goddard continued to add items to his Life List—and yet he was a man who was not dissatisfied with the life he lived, becoming one of the greatest adventurers of the 20^th century. In 2013, Goddard died at the age of 88 having accomplished many, though not all of his initial 127 goals.

The greater purpose of learning about the Goddard list, I believe, is not to marvel at the man who accomplished all this in his lifetime. The greater purpose is to show that not only are far-out goals attainable by average people, but also that it is still very acceptable to not accomplish all of your goals in your lifetime. John Goddard fell short on many things, but he is still highly regarded as a successful person.

Even though I have made a ‘bucket list’ of sorts, I don’t like to think of it as such. The items on my list, for the most part, are not things I’d feel like a failure if I didn’t accomplish before I “kick the bucket.” That’s why I refer to it as my ‘Non-Bucket List.’ Crossing things off the list before I die will be appreciated, but is not the point of the exercise. My list is more about things I would enjoy doing than a to-do list which I am obligated to complete. I would much rather walk away from the goals on my list rather than let them consume me.

Unlike Goddard, I don’t really refer to my list frequently and check off my accomplishments. My latest list was made in a short bout of inspiration. And then, instead of printing it off and following along with my goals, I largely ignored the list, losing it instead to the recesses of my hard drive. Much to my delight when I looked upon my list more recently, I had found that I had in fact unknowingly accomplished a few of my goals! But then there are some goals on my list that can never be checked off, because they are fundamentally immeasurable. I’ll never know if I accomplished them even when I die. Some of my loftiest goals relate to fundamental questions of life. Was I a good person? Did I live a good life? Some goals you can never cross off a list, but you just have to keep striving towards nonetheless.

I’m sharing my own non-bucket list here because it is helpful to see other people’s list when you make your own, just like how John Goddard’s list served as the inspiration for my seventh-grade project long ago.

“The Summer Day”

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver